User blog:Gorvar/Gorvar reviews: Highschool of the Dead.
imghttp://www.eternalsaga.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Highschool_of_the_Dead.jpg[/img] imghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3b/HOTD_Cast.jpg[/img] Hello everyone. Now I was thinking a while back to review Final Fantasy 8’s plot and such, but it got me wondering, so far I haven’t reviewed ANYTHING I like at all. To stop being one key and review horrible pieces of shit, I decided to hold of the FFVIII review and actually give you honest to good fair chance review on something I came across recently, that being Highschool of the Dead. (HOTD) HOTD is a anime based on a manga about a group of highschool students trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. Now I cant deny it, I’m a big zombie apocalypse fan, I love Left 4 Dead, 28 Days later, I listen to World War Z the audio book a lot...i’m just a big fan. The reason why is just seeing how people and governments would react to a outbreak of a zombie virus and how it changes society totally. It quickly turns into a fight for survival where you have to kill your zombified relatives, scavenge for food and weapons, always keep an eye open at night and sometimes going up against other survivors. It also focuses on character development a lot since people who have survived such a event had to change in order to survive. It’s humanity who has it’s back against the wall and only the best and brightest can make it out. Total chaos and destruction but also focused on rebuilding society and mankind. That’s why I also like the Halo games and Resistance, but that’s for another time. What is very great about this animated series (and the manga which I sort of skimmed through) is that it focused on a group of people we haven’t seen in any zombie apocalypse flick or game...Highschool students. Yes in 28 days later we focused on a group of random survivors, in Quarantine (shit film btw simply because those idiots in that film pissed me of so much because they didn’t follow the zombie survival rulebook) we had a camera crew some cops and some firemen and in Dawn of the Dead we again had a random number of people from all walks of life, never did we focus on students like at all. The series starts in a Highschool where the infection literally bumps into the school gates in the form of a zombie, but it quickly infects the entire school and less then three hours later they’re only a few survivors left because of the panic that ensued. However in chapter 3 the group make it out and find themselves thrown into a world full with the living dead, paranoid survivors and the crumbling government forces who lost all contact with their superiors and are basically left for dead. (I MADE A PUN!) The group consists of six people, five students and a nurse, who use their own skills to fight the undead horde. The ‘leader’ of the group uses his baseball bat to smash some heads in while others prefer using their kendo blade (wooden sword) and a makeshift spear because of their sport attributes. The nerdy guy uses a customized nailgun while the nurse and the smart chick use their expertise to help the group with wounds and figuring out where to go next. This group is very cool to watch during combat simply because they are classmates of each other and thus they make a better team. Except for the smart chick who refused to give the nerdy guy his nail ammo because she thinks she’s better then everyone, but that soon changes after she nearly got killed. They also fight like a rag tag group of survivors since...well they are students and not soldiers. When they get guns though it’s thanks to the nerdy guy, who is a gun fanatic, how they know how to operate them and during the skirmishes with the living dead they first suck at using them but later on improve simply because of practice. The head shots they can line up with one clip of ammo is amazing in the later episodes. Right best get this all brought under points and bring some order in my praise and gripes with this show. Number 1: The Plot. (for the first 3 episodes) To be honest you cannot fail in setting up a zombie apocalypse plot.....with the exception of the Resident Evil movie franchise, but let’s not get into that. The show takes place in Japan where a young student (Takashi Komuro) is watching over the city from his school building. Like all young kids he has problems and heart aches, it being in the form of his ex-girlfriend now being with his best friend. While he broods he sees a single suspicious looking man who keeps bumping In to the school gates. Like in all fiction the Sports teacher is a insufferable prick and tells the man, who looks very ill and moans, to sod off while the other teachers try to calm him down and call for a ambulance. However the suspicious man suddenly bites the sports teacher in the arm, which kills him in ten seconds flat. However the Sport Teacher gets up a minute later and starts biting the other teachers, thus the virus gets inside the school walls. Takashi runs to his class where he tries to grab his ex-girlfriend (Rei Miyamoto) and his best friend (Hisashi Igo) and try to get out of the school before it’s to late. Of course the class nor his friends believe him until the Public Announcer tries to calmly urge the students and teachers to get out of the school as quickly as possible, but horribly fails as he starts screaming when a zombie tears his throat out. During the panic Takashi and his friends head toward the roof, thus avoiding the stampede, where they come across their first zombie. Takashi grabs his baseball and tries to fight off the zombie. Hisashi tries to snap the zombie’s neck (big no no) but gets bitten. Here’s what I like about anime (the proper cool ones not like Pokemon or friggin’ Bakugan), when Hisashi gets bitten like a litter of blood flies out of his wound while a moment later he just says he only get bit a little. Awesome. Anyway the trio get up the roof after getting through a mob of their former peers and seal themselves there so later they can plan a way out, however Hisashi starts getting pale and barfs out blood. Rei tries to help, but even Hisashi knows he is a dead man and asks Takashi to kill him since he doesn’t want to become one of ‘Them’. The characters in the show call the zombies here ‘Them’ despite them being your average zombie. In the manga it gets explained why exactly, basically giving them a other name gives them a other identity and thus lays easier on the mind to kill your fallen friends and family. Takashi fulfils Hisashi’s wish after Hisashi turned in one of ‘Them’. Rei tirades Takashi, throwing insults at him and telling he really killed Hisashi because she dumped him. Takashi, who has probably the suckiest day in his life, just has enough and nearly leaves Rei alone to fend for herself but decides against it after she threw a emotional 180 and holds him. Episode 1 ends on a bleak yet awesome way by a single leaf of a tree falling in a puddle of blood as the undead roam through the school and the street. Episode 2 starts in the same classroom but this time we follow the nerdy guy (Kohta Hirano) and the smartest girl in the school Saya Takagi. She has the same idea as Takashi but grabs Kohta and goes another way. However by the time they get to the roof ‘Them’ are all over the place and are forced to shelter in the wood carving class. There Hirano makes a bad ass customized nailgun and makes it so that it looks and holds like a real gun. I just love this guy, outside of combat he’s the typical friendly nerd guy who plays D&D in his mum’s basement or plays on his Xbox all day, but when he gets a gun in his hand he just snaps and racks up the body kills. Early on in the series he is the group’s most deadly asset as he can cut down zombies making it easier for the melee based group members to fight them. In a other side of the building we meet the bimbo headed school nurse (Shizau Marikawa) who gets saved by the school’s kendo champion (Saeko Busujima). Saeko is my second favourite character of the show just because she’s ballsy enough to go head to head with the horde of the living dead with a WOODEN SWORD. That’s like the Chuck Norris level of bravery. The three groups meet and hold up in a room to rest while they switch on the tv. The Tv report is chilling at best as this outbreak seems to be happening on a global scale. Washington Dc is in panic as the President (strangely white in the anime despite this only being made in 2010) and his cabinet flee while the Army is shooting ‘Them’ on Times Square. Paris itself burns as does large cities in China while all contact is lost with Russia. In the Third episode the party decide to grab a bus from the school’s garage and try to find their families in the nearby city while trying to save as many survivors as they can. They manage to rescue two pockets of survivors in a awesome charge that rivals in sheer awesomeness with the Rohirim from Return of the King. They manage to get to the bus but lose a few students in the process. When the bus slams out of the School gates and properly joins the chaos of the outside world.....while, your going to have to check it out for yourself what happens haha. The plot is very standard for a horror series about the zombie apocalypse, but like those seires which rely on character development the plot gets better as the party begin to realize they lose their own humanity because of the battles against ‘Them’ and how every time they fail to save a survivor it hurts less while the survivors they do save turn into a cult under the leadership of the one teacher Rei warned Takashi not to save. The anime is currently at Episode 9 but around 6 September Anime network will release the 10th episode. Number 2: The Characters I’m a big fan of character development, which is something we’ll see a lot in the party during the series. Takashi Komuro is the unofficial leader of the group and before the ‘outbreak’ a low grade 17 year old student who flunked last year. As the series progresses he comes up with more plans and manages to help his friends retain their humanity and manage their emotional baggage. However like all characters should have he has flaws. Like I mentioned earlier he tries to save as many people as he can, actually going through a horde of ‘Them’ to save a little girl while leaving them both trapped until they get picked up by the party in their humvee. The teacher from earlier (Kōichi Shidō) is a manipulative, arrogant smart man and managed to turn most of the survivors of the Highschool, save the party, against Takashi and turned himself into their leader. Not really a flaw, but it does show despite the dozen warnings against saving everyone Takashi does what he thinks is best and no doubt makes no friends that way. He is a all rounder fighter, meaning he can use melee weapons and long range weapons, like a Baseball bat and a machine gun. Rei Miyamoto is your average teenager girl who is forced to rely on her own devices after she loses her boyfriend Hisashi and her father, a policemen, loses contact with her due to the cell phones cutting out everywhere. She and Takashi were good friends and they genuinely love each other, but because of Takashi’s flaws he could not really express his feelings to her. In spite she started a relationship with his best friend, but her feelings for Takashi were still there. After the Outbreak they become close friends again. She is a expert in ‘spear techniques’ and it first uses a broken off broom stick and alter on a gun with a bayonet. Saeko Busujima is one of the more serious characters in the show. She is strong, independent and most of all....bad ass. When we first meet her she just knocks ‘Them’ over to conserve energy and time, showing she has quite a military mind. Her dark side though is the main reason why I think she is called Saeko (Psycho). Before the Outbreak she nearly killed a man who tried to rape her. This encounter seemed to have given her a urge to beat people up and to constantly make her feel powerful. Because of her mastery of Kendo, she’s the party’s strongest melee fighter, and even grows more deadly as she gets a friggin’ katana. She’s close to Takashi, whom she told her darker nature story though, and it’s implied they had sex after these two got caught off from the group at one point. However because of the secret being out Takashi feels she might snap in some time in the future and become a danger to themselves, but for now he accepts her darker side to increase their chances of survival. Kohta Hirano is my favourite character by far in this show, simply because for some part I can relate to him. Before the outbreak he got bullied so often because of his weight and...well being a nerd, but after he became the group’s most deadliest member. He is a gun expert and knows nearly every gun known to man and knows how to operate them. During a trip to the USA he had training at Blackwater, a tactical training facility, which further made him more efficient with weaponry. I like to see him as a disaster that waited to happen, near the same levels at what happened in Columbine. He was being picked on, he had the training to use fire arms and no doubt would find a way to get them (since his parents are very rich). When the outbreak came however he had his excuse to kill his former tormentors and showed no qualms in wounding or even kill Kōichi Shidō when he became increasingly more power hungry. His lighter side however is a lot nicer and he is a big teddy bear really. When the group saves the little girl he’s the one who connects to her more and even plays with her. The best I can describe him as he is a young Lynch from Kane and Lynch. He is a unstable, insane gun fanatic who could snap at any moment if not for his medication. As said before he has the best aim of the group and can turn anything into a long range weapon, but he is hopeless if he doesn’t have any ammo. He is the show’s comic relief though and he does get a chuckle or two out of me, and even some laughter after he pulls a Ahnold moment during a fight. Dude also has the most head shots. Saya Takagi is the group’s ‘brains’ and basically saved them several times by advising other routes which would be devoid of ‘Them’ while others would’ve been full of. She’s a self proclaimed genius and one of Takashi’s childhood friends. Her biggest flaw is her own self grandeur. She knows she is smart but she thinks everyone else is dumber then her and flat out insults everyone and even declines to help if she was not properly addressed. She doesn’t fight a lot, but that’s not her strength since she is best navigating or thinking ahead to the next stop. She has a crush on Takashi, like every woman on this show it seems, but in turn has sort of a thing going with Hirano. Shizuka Marikawa is the blonde school nurse and to be fair...I don’t really like her. They just took the dumb blonde archetype and just went bat shit insane with it. She has medical knowledge and drives the party around with the bus or humvee. What’s to say about her? ....well.....she has boobs, Seriously 60 percent of the time on the show we get a good look at those fun pillows. Which ideally leads to the gripes I have with this show! Number 3: Fan Service This show is full of fan service. Every panty shot chance they got, they take it, every time we can see a woman’s bra, we see it. Like I pointed out earlier every woman on this show has a thing for Takashi who is the main character. This show is really great, but the sheer amount of fan service is just to god damn much. If you show boobs all the time or asses your audience wont take you seriously anymore, even if your script is good. Even the intro is full of it, take a look! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTcQT5J-LzA Also episode 6 (in the Dead of Night) I like to dub ‘Episode 6: Fan Service edition’ simply because we see the women bathing and touching each others breasts. Seriously, they talk about breast sizes while the living dead are JUST OUTSIDE! When I saw this I went ‘Really? Are we going that route..Alright....?’ It doesn’t help their poor feminine brains go all loopy after their hot bath and start flirting with both the boys and walk around half naked. I understand they are aiming at a certain demographic, but I swear at times I thought this show was going to turn into a hentai. Now I have nothing against a bit of fan service, but know your limits, really! This show even has Matrix boobs! I’m not kidding, matrix boobs. Those things avoid a friggin’ bullet that passes through them. Now Hirano is a awesome shot, and a bit of a go-getter at trying to peek in the woman’s bathing room, but I think shooting your bullet through a team mate’s cleavage is a good idea. Also the titles of the show are a bit....bland at best. 01 "Spring of the Dead" 02 "Escape from the Dead" 03 "Democracy under the Dead" And so on. However I do like how they show their titles a la Heroes. (It being shown somewhere as part of the scenery) Conclusion: The fan service aside, this is a good show I think you should see...if your above 18. It deals with the human nature in the wake of a phenomena they cant explain and how they try to stay alive while trying to stay as human as possible. That and Hirano is a friggin’ bad ass amongst nerds. Defiantly check it out. Category:Blog posts